


Take What You Can Get

by MERains



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen, frienship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MERains/pseuds/MERains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why did the ultimate survivor offer MacLeod his head seventeen years ago?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take What You Can Get

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own I am only playing
> 
> At some point I will probably figure out how to write a story that isn't just dialogue. Unfortunately today is not that day. So dialogue it is.

Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod is sitting with Methos in Le Blues Bar after closing listening to Joe play the extraordinary music only he can pull from the guitar. No two musicians play the same way but all the great ones have the ability to touch people in different ways. Music, friends, and life what could be better? Well love and sex is better but we take what we can get.  
  
Duncan snorts and looks over at Methos the living breathing version of the motto take what you can get. Methos looks back at him raising his eyebrows silently asking what? “I’m just pondering music, friendship, and life.” Duncan snorts again, “Also the motto of take what you can get and how it applies to you.”  
  
“I don’t believe I have ever heard you make that sound before. It is really quite awful; please cease pondering anything that draws it out of you.” Methos responds to MacLeod’s comments and noises while Joe puts his guitar away for the night.  
  
“Okay you two, get out. The bar closed half an hour ago. It’s time for all the good,” Joe looks at MacLeod, “and bad,” he looks at Methos, “little Immortals to be on their way.”  
  
“Why is MacLeod the good Immortal and I am the bad Immortal?” Methos asks indignantly.  
  
“Mac pays his bar tab and tips the waiters; you never do.”  
  
“Well I suppose I can’t argue with that. It isn’t as if I am going to start paying for my drinks.”  
  
Joe sits at the table with Methos and Mac shaking his head at Methos. “Why do I still let you come in here and drink my booze?”  
  
“My charm, wit, good looks, and the wisdom of millennia I so generously share with you and MacLeod.”  
  
“What wisdom,” MacLeod scoffs. “In the seventeen years I have known you I have heard two wise statements come from your mouth. I don’t think that your wisdom is enough to cover your bar tab.”  
  
“Just because you don’t recognize wisdom when you hear it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I have spent years trying to teach you things. The fact that you refuse to learn is not my fault.”  
  
“I learn, I learn new things all the time. Joe tell him I learn.” MacLeod crosses his arms and pouts just the tiniest bit.  
  
“Oh look at him Joe; please explain to me how MacLeod learns new things all the time.”  
  
“I am not getting involved in this conversation. I just want you both to leave.” Joe starts to get up and Methos covers his hand with his own to stop him from leaving.  
  
“Joe, explain to MacLeod why I offered him my head seventeen years ago.” Methos looks into Joe’s eyes and Joe can see how serious he is.  
  
“No way,” Joe tells Methos. “That is a conversation to be had between the two of you.”  
  
“But you know why the man who wants to survive more than anything else offered his head to MacLeod, don’t you?” Methos asks Joe, his voice hard and unrelenting. Joe nods his head yes that he understands why. “Joe can learn when I am not even trying to teach him anything.” Methos taunts MacLeod.  
  
“You told me why you offered me your head. What is there to learn?” MacLeod throws his hands up and looks at Joe and Methos.  
  
“I despair of you ever learning the things I am trying to teach you. Everything that you have experienced for yourself in these past years and you still don’t understand.”  
  
“You know, you could both leave like I asked you to. Then you wouldn’t need to finish this conversation that is going to end with both of you angry.” Joe tries to reason with Methos and MacLeod.  
  
“You offered me your head because Kalas couldn’t beat both of us. That is what you told me.” MacLeod tells Methos his mouth tight with anger.  
  
“That is true. I did not have the fire to beat him, you did. If you had taken my head that day, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod would have ceased to exist as anyone knows him. I would have taken you over; your body, your fire, and your life would have become mine. You are not strong enough to take my Quickening and remain whole. You would have been shoved to the side. You would have become a little piece of Methos.” Methos gets up to pour himself another beer while he waits for MacLeod’s response.  
  
“Methos that is not possible. Even if you thought you could do that, you can’t know for certain it would work out as planned. You could have let Kalas take your head if you thought that would work. Besides you have no idea how strong I am. I would not make it easy for you.” MacLeod leans back in his chair and gives Methos his best answer that expression.  
  
“Please, I didn’t want to have to go around as Darth Vadar for the next few millennia. Plus you would not have stopped going after Kalas so if I was not able to beat you in the fight I might have lost myself forever. Taking you over after taking Kalas over may not have been possible. It is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of power and strength that has to be rebuilt over time. You would not have given me enough time nor would you have believed me if I told you Methos had taken over Kalas. Offering you my head was a risk I would only have taken if I was sure I would come out on top.”  
  
“You see Highlander it isn’t about physical strength, strength of character or will. It is about the power of your Quickening and knowing how to harness and use that power. You have seen the power of the Light Quickening, the glory that was Darius. You have experienced the power of a Dark Quickening, how very little control you retained of yourself afterwards and yet you still doubt its power. There is a reason I was not afraid to take your head after you took the Dark Quickening. I knew it would not overpower me. There is so much left for you to learn, I hope you live long enough to learn it.”  
  
MacLeod gets up, pounds his fist on the table and points at Methos. “I don’t want to learn anything if it means becoming like you.” MacLeod stalks out of the bar and into the night.  
  
“Why’d ya have to do that? You knew how he’d react when you told him.” Joe asks Methos.  
  
“When MacLeod refused to take my head so many years ago I thought that he and I would become great friends. All the power in my body and he didn’t want it; I thought finally after so long a friend I won’t have to kill. I had been hiding my true identity from Immortals for so long I greatly missed having a friend who knew me.” Methos looks away from Joe thinking of all of the challenges fought and all the Immortal lives lost because so many people wanted his head without even realizing what it would mean if they won.  
  
“Mac is your friend, so what’s the problem?”  
  
“MacLeod is my friend as long as he doesn’t have to see me as I really am. I am the ultimate survivor that is who I am. Occasionally I will risk my head for someone but not very often.” Methos looks at Joe, the lines on his face, the whiteness of his hair and sees him dying right before his eyes. “You were not supposed to become a great friend Joe, but you did. In ten years, twenty if I’m lucky, you are going to die on me. If MacLeod would stop being such a self-righteous hypocrite all the time it won’t be so difficult when I lose you.”  
  
Joe looks at Methos, sees how tightly his hands are holding his beer and how tense his shoulders are and tells him “Bullshit.”  
  
Methos holds Joe’s stare for a minute allowing the silence to build between until he has to respond. “Really, bullshit is your response to what I just told you?”  
  
“I’m a self-righteous hypocrite, Mac’s a self-righteous hypocrite; part of the reason you are a great friend is the fact you don’t throw our hypocrisy in our faces very often. So why is today different?”  
  
Methos smiles warmly at Joe and leans back in his seat. “I am not very good at expressing myself; instead of saying what I want to say I become petulant and rude which pushes people away. Every time I leave for a while when I return you are older. One day I will return and you won’t be here. That will be a terrible day.”  
  
“There’s nothing I can say Methos. I’d live forever if I could but I can’t. Don’t waste your time missing me while I am still here. Mac wouldn’t be Mac without his code. You don’t want him to change. When I’m dead you will find someone else who has looked death in the face and was willing to do anything to survive that you can commiserate with. You don’t need Mac for that.”  
  
“You would have made a fabulous Immortal Joe.”  
  
Joe smiles at him, “Come on these old mortal bones need to get to bed.”  
  
Methos walks Joe out to his car thinking to himself that he needs to spend a little more time here while he still has a friend who knows him so well. He spends so much time here and there. Time enough for there later.


End file.
